Why Not All the Time? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jun 14, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 24.

Why Not All the Time?

By Editor

A Baptist journal of Kansas City, the Word and Way, says:

The results of Sunday closing in St. Louis are quite marked. The city has greater quiet than for years, and the police courts have the smallest Monday morning dockets for many decades. Mr. John H. Howard, former president of the Liquor Dealers Benevolent Association, recently stated that if Sunday closing continued, more than six hundred saloons would have to go out of business. He also said there was a net saving to every inhabitant of the city of twenty-four cents each week, or a total of $146,550 to the family purse of the city. This would mean a grand total saving per annum of $7,622,100, and a corresponding reduction to the liquor traffic income for the same period.

This is an excellent argument for closing all the time. How any community can rejoice over the closing of these vile places one day in the week, appreciating the saving to the people in money and morals, and not go further and demand further benefit, is a mystery. It would take no more votes to close the saloons every day than to close them one day. It is very doubtful about Sunday closing being the means of putting out six hundred saloons. The saloons gather their harvests the nights after pay-days; at least these are the nights on which wage workers are said to part with their money, and the pay-days are usually the day before and the day after Sunday. It remains to be seen whether the people of St. Louis will so appreciate the benefits of one day's closing that they will move for several times as much benefit in the same line; or whether they will be satisfied with having the saloons nominally observe Sunday, as in many other places.